Added per your requests: There seems to only by a few places online who carry Tazo tea in bulk. Cook's Nook.com was the only one I found that allowed you to buy only one bag of each type of tea, rather than two of the same.

A good a time as any I suppose, if a year late, to share the blankets my mom knit and gave to the boys for Christmas LAST year. 2007, that is.

The boys love their blankets, wrapping themselves in them on the coldest
nights (like tonight) as a first layer underneath their down comforters. R is feeling ill today and so is snuggled under one on the couch by the fire right now.

They're knit from good ol' love it or hate it (or both) 100% acrylic
worsted weight yarns. I suppose if you've been knitting most of your life with nice wools and cottons, then, when you're 75 plus, I
suppose you're entitled to knit with what you choose, Red Heart or whatever. She's been making these collaboratively with a church knitting group for several years now for the graduating high school seniors, but these ones for the boys she knit herself. Barring melting them on the woodstove, they're pretty close to indestructible. Pillows made by me for the boys from thrifted and stashed corduroys, cottons, and linens. The same pattern shape was used for both E's cat and R's owl. Heavily inspired by many similar ones seen out there in blogland, on etsy, and in the Pottery Barn kids' catalog.Tychus Hat, knit for my bro for this past Christmas, of Patons Classic Merino Wool. When this hat pattern was first published I just knew I'd someday make
this for him, to replace this hat that he lost not long after receiving
it. That's just the way of handknits. They come and go so easily.

I think I modified the weaving together of the cast on and cast of edges to more of a kitchener stitch weaving in. The peak of the hat ended up a little funky but it's OK enough. If I made this again I think I'd do a provisional cast on and do a full kitchener weaving together. A super fast and easy bulky warm hat.

Tea Wallets using this great pattern that I only found after purchasing a nice ready-made one on etsy. The one on the right, above, was for my mom. She really does carry herbal tea bags in her purse with her. The other one is to have on hand as a last minute gift. Not the best pics, I know.

Activity has slowed at the feeder, but someone still visits throughout the day, pecking away at the bread, along with a few nut hatches and chickadees checking in from time to time. Next time we might mix some seeds directly into the dough.

Silly but there are still pics of homemadeChristmas presents to share. Just need to upload the pics.

Bread wreath, baked in a jello mold, slathered in peanut butter and bird seed. Makes for a very busy spot out in the yard and pretty fine bird watching from inside.The bigger birds (stellar's jays, flickers, downy woodpeckers) have a hard time getting at it, picking up the dropped seeds off the ground, mostly. But the chickadees and nuthatches feed directly from the wreath. We put this up on Tuesday and it's almost cleared of seeds today. We'll see if they like the bread as well or if we'll need to recoat it. Yes, it's been busy out there, but in a quiet sort of way.

OK. Yesterday just couldn't be allowed to pass by without checking in here, with some random thoughts from the last few days and last 8 years:

My children have not known a world without GWB as their president. OK, not exactly true, as R was almost 1 year old when he was sworn in, but for all intents and purposes....

Eight years ago, we had only enough solar power in our house at the time to power a small radio and a few lights. The only news media I exposed myself to was CBC radio and occasionally NPR So, it wasn't until several weeks after he became president that even came across a picture of him in a newspaper and saw what he looked like.

R has written and emailed his opinions to GWB several times in his own young lifetime. One year, probably when he was 5 or 6, while listening to a state of the union speech on the radio, the phone rang and he picked it up. I can't quite remember who was on the other end, my brother or C's dad, I think. They asked him what he was doing and he replied, "Just sitting here on the couch listening to the president tell lies." (Hmm. Not sure if he came up with that one on his own or heard it from someone else in the family.....)

You just don't see a whole lot of campaign signs in people's yards around here in rural Montana, at least not ones for the presidential race. Local campaign signs, well, that's another story. I think I saw only one for John McCain and one forBarack Obama within about 60 miles of our house. On the other hand, there were Ron Paul signs practically every where you went during this past campaign "season".

Last October, there was much discussing of the presidential election of course, but also a lot about how we elect local and state representatives as well. One day around then, R piped up from the back seat of the car with something to this effect: "You know those people we vote for to go speak for us in Washington D.C.? Are they kind of like those guys who act as Santa and then go tell him what kids tell them they want for Christmas?" My response: "Yeah. Something like that.", smiling and knowing that he "got it", then realizing that, yes, we have an almost 9 year old who still fully believes in Santa.

On November 4th, only a few months ago, I stayed up after all else in the house were asleep, listening to XM radio's coverage as the results came in.

Thank you also to Amanda for turning us on to this book.
It looks like you've had this book close at hand recently as well. We've had it out from the library for over a month and have barely
scratched its surface. Monday, our annual watching of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech online, was followed by much discussion and readings from
this book about how the White House was built by slaves, how some of
our first presidents were slave owners themselves, how now we were going to have an African-American as the president in that White House.

Yesterday, the boys and I watched the inauguration day proceedings online (using the radio only as backup when I accidentally unplugged the computer just minutes before the swearing in. ACK!) It just so happened that we upgraded our DSL last week, enough to allow mostly unbroken live streaming. We periodically checked in on a GWB countdown clock online, and the boys also set their own timer (seen above), counting down the last couple of hours of Bush's presidency. Then, after the swearing in, we refreshed the White House web page to see the change over there as well.

Far too much of my own elementary education was spent on US history. I was in first grade in 1976, the bicentennial year, after all. We're mostly using Story of the World as our history curriculum which, by the way has been quite a learning experience for me, as well. I'm afraid, however, we've been missing out by not covering our own country's history with a little more depth. If nothing else, the past few days have been quite an education, both for the boys and for myself, and I have a renewed interest in making a better effort to
teach the boys more about the history of theirown country as well.

And Chris just built and finished installing a new, red, front door, with glass in it to let in more light. Such a change! Just this morning I glanced up and saw a huge moose pausing there, framed in perfectly! Not enough time to grab the camera, but we went outside and watched it wander away across the field, afterward searching for it's prints in the snow.

Out for breakfast with C's mom between Christmas and New Years. The view from our table. This was where I worked for a couple of years waiting tables up until a week before R was born, almost 9 years ago. Towards the end of the pregnancy the trays could rest on top of my belly/him.

Been needing a break. Can't seem to pull off much lately. Needing to get out and be with "real" people. It's that winter thing. Skiing has started in earnest, too. Having a hard time justifying fitting posting in. Going to try and post again here and there. Really. Maybe not quite as often as in the past. At least for a little while.

Fabric mushrooms given at Christmas. Made from this pattern, but of spotty cottons and linen rather than wool felt. I added a yarn loop at the top so it could be hung as an ornament, and a round piece of cardboard at the bottom so that the loop could be removed to be used as a standing toy, decoration, or even as a pincushion.